Startups Archives - Page 69 of 144

Atlanta Startup Vir2o Sharing Everything In Real Time Improves In Person Relationships

Atlanta startup Vir2o, promises to be a whole new social experience. That’s quite a lofty statement, but after checking them out and talking with them, if executed correctly it will work.

Vir20 shares just about everything there is to share in real time, which improves actual in person relationships. You can go shopping with your friends on Vir2o. You can go to the movies with your friends on Vir2o. You can share photos with your friends on Vir2o. You can listen to and share music on Vir2o.

Anytime an entrepreneur wants to create a new social network or new social media outlet it’s immediately compared to Facebook. When Facebook burst onto the college scene and then opened up their doors to anyone over 13, no one believed they would overtake Myspace, but they did.

In an interview we did with Vir2o’s Founder,Kayode Aladesuyi, he mentioned sharing a lot. When we think of sharing and social media we naturally think of Facebook. Spaulding explains how Vir20 is different than Facebook “…doesn’t necessarily enhance social interaction between people, especially if there is physical distance between them. We wanted to bridge the gap between people who live in different parts of the world and provide them with a real-time interactive tool to bring them closer together”

Since Vir20 is all about live sharing, in real time, they consider themselves a “Live Community” versus a social network.

Check out the rest of our interview with Spaulding below.

200 Startups Participate In Startup Maryland’s Pitch Across Maryland Bus Tour

Late this past summer Startup Maryland co-founders Mike Binko and Julie Lenzer Kirk announced that they would be holding a one of a kind bus tour across the state of Maryland in September. Binko and Lenzer Kirk were able to procure a giant tour bus, get it wrapped and outfitted with a video studio, work space and a place for startups to sit and talk as it caravaned across the state.

The trip began September 11th and ended on September 28th. The bus adventure started on Maryland’s eastern shore and continued all the way to the communities in Western Maryland.

“The Pitch Across Maryland tour, which ran from September 11 – 28, 2012, held celebration and promotional rallies at 25 stops throughout the state of Maryland,” Lenzer Kirk, Startup Maryland Co-Chair said in a statement. “Culminating in the Last Stop, First Step party and celebration event at Merriweather Post Pavilion on September 28th this Tour has rightly placed the spotlight on the vitality in Maryland’s innovation economy.”

Both Lenzer Kirk and Binko are passionate about the startup community in the state of Maryland as is Howard County Executive and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Ken Ulman, who provided some financial backing for the trip. When the bus tour was announced Binko was optimistic that 40-50 startups would use the onboard video studio to do pitch as part of a state wide contest. When all was said and done 168 startups actually did pitches. Maryland’s sitting Governor, Martin O’Malley also pitched on the bus. Binko told a group of Startup America regional champions in October that O’Malley had contacted the bus team and asked to come and take a tour. Admission to that tour was a pitch video.

“These videos are a testament to the strength, dedication and diversity of Maryland’s entrepreneurial community,” said Binko in a news release. “When we launched the Pitch Across Maryland tour we thought we might have 40-50 entrepreneurs join us on the Tour Bus and pitch, so 168 is phenomenal. Including all the rallies and events we held more than 200 startups actually participated in the tour.”

In addition to the 168 startups that pitched another 30 or so startups came out to the 25 stops that were on the bus trip. Some even volunteered to help.

All 168 pitches (not including the governors) are posted to YouTube where anyone can vote for their favorite pitch. A prize will be awarded to the entrepreneur with the most “view” votes after the voting closes on December 31st. Startup Maryland will announce 7 finalists next week on November 7th. Those finalists will have a chance to pitch during the entrepreneurial expo November 13th.

Members of the judging panel include serial entrepreneur peers as well as representatives from TEDCO, DBED, universities, incubators/accelerators and economic development agencies (EDAs).

Linkage:

Get warmed up for Tuesday and go vote for your favorite pitch here

Stay in tune with Startup Maryland here

Make sure you click this link and sign up for “everywhereelse.co” here

Miami Startup: Clearci Simplifies Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence, a critical part of corporate strategy, and also one of the most misunderstood, has evolved tremendously since it was officially inaugurated in the mid 80’s. Now,clearCi, a company based out of Fort Lauderdale, FL, arrived to transform it by making information simpler and more accessible than ever. The practice, innocently confused by many as ‘spying’, consists of collection, classification and distribution of information about the competition in order to facilitate better strategic decisions.

The Internet changed the form in which secondary intelligence was collected since instead of retrieving it from supermarket aisles, pamphlets, books, and TV commercials, now it’s available online, and for the most part, what Competitive Intelligence (CI) professionals need to do is surf the Internet to gather information from numerous websites; still a time consuming proposition. Recently, with the evolution of search crawlers, some companies simplified the task, but now clearCi is making a big push by simplifying the process to unprecedented levels thanks to patent-pending algorithms and technology.

When asked to explain what the cloud-based SaaS platform does Co-Founder Joe Levy is reluctant to offer complicated explanations, rightfully using one sentence: “We offer software tools that help you keep track of your competition.” How so? The marketing team breaks it down further by saying that the technology works as an automated CI informant hired to monitor any competitor webpage or data source related to products, industries, markets, customers, vendors and even key partners. The tool cuts through the clutter caused by Big Data, and only relevant information is gathered and stored into an online portal that organizes data into channels, sharable folders, and reports, making data more manageable across an entire footprint.

Continue reading at our partner site Startropica.com

Berlin Startup: Versus IO, The Comparison Platform, Adds 240 Cities To Compare

The internet is great for comparison shopping. Every major online retailer like Amazon, Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse and everyone in between, offers some kind of side by side comparison of products. Just about every time I go to make a major electronics purchase, I comparison shop something online.

Well Berlin startup Versus IO is a comparison platform for just about anything in the world. Sure you may want to compare the iPhone 5 vs the Samsung Galaxy S 3, or the Galaxy Nexus vs the iPad Mini. But what if you wanted to compare other things? What if you wanted to take a European vacation and wanted to weigh France vs Italy. Well Versus IO allows you to do that comparison too.

Versus IO added 240 cities to compare using their platform. Just go to their website here and enter each of the two cities you want to compare (as seen below) and voila, instant comparison.

While the site is still in Beta the folks behind Versus IO plan on continuing expansion in to a wide range of verticals. Versus IO has been set up in such a way you should be able to compare just about anything.

Adding comparisons for things like hotels, cars, airlines, department stores and other things people use everyday will definitely make Versus IO a goto site for information. Review sites like Yelp are great but with Versus IO you can get the comparison info and do your own research based on the things you’re looking for.

With their new city comparison Versus IO used over 100 factors in their criteria for comparison. Including:

Education – universities
Crime rates – murder
Climate
Infrastructure – airports, stations
Safety – smoking ban
Economy and business – GDP
Culture – museums, art galleries
People – population, salaries, ethnic groups
And many more…

The results screen is graphically rich but once you drill down you can see where each city met in terms of those criteria factors. For the comparison that we tried, Baltimore vs Caracas, we saw that Baltimore was “Pro” for 17 reasons and Caracas was “Pro” for 12.

The comparison actually took milliseconds but the information returned was plentiful. The top reason to choose Baltimore over Caracas was the higher proportion of women. Baltimore is 53.4% women where Caracas is only 50.5%. Versus IO also found that there are 72.37% more Facebook users in Baltimore than Caracas. Surprisingly, we found out that Caracas has more murders than Baltimore.

Versus IO isn’t just a cute expansion on the hot or not concept, it does exactly what the founders say it does.

Now that they’ve implemented cities and made a step away from traditional electronics comparisons they have plans to increase their comparison engine to 640 verticals. In the coming year Versus IO plans to add real estate, food, credit cards, TVs, banks, plastic surgeons and motorcycles.

Linkage:

Go try it for yourself here

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New Jersey Startup SmartTests Streamlines Professional Test Study Guides

Are you a licensed real estate agent? Do you have your series 7? Are you a CPA? If you answered yes to any of those three questions and you’ve become licensed, or taken your test in the last few years it may have involved a mobile app study guide. More and more professional accreditation and licensing tests have started to offer their study materials for mobile devices, and specifically smartphones.

Bryan Van Demark, the cofounder of New Jersey startup SmartTests discovered first hand how cumbersome study apps can be for professional testing when he was studying for the CPA exam.

In researching this story we found that the study apps available for real estate licenses and CPA certifications were either inundated with extra buttons and functionality no sane person would need, or so light, you might as well be looking at your test study materials on a text editor.

SmartTests has solved that problem by offering the most robust study materials in an easy to understand, easy to navigate and appealing UI. The SmartTests team has baked functionality into the app study guides for the CPA exam, based on the way professionals actually study.

Currently SmartTests is available in a whole suite of apps for the Roger CPA Review. The company plans on building on the success of their Roger apps by offering study guide apps for similar, important professional testing.

Sure this may not be the sexiest startup, but it’s definitely one of the most useful, especially taking into consideration the fact that tests like these often lead to more lucrative career opportunities.

We got a chance to talk with SmartTests Co-Founder John Ceniza. Check out our interview below.

Indianapolis Startup LabDoor Is The Consumer Reports For Medicine & Supplements

St. Louis born, young, serial entrepreneur Neil Thanedar has been flying under the radar lately while he’s been working on his latest startup project. We ran into him at one of the Verge Indy startup events in Indianapolis over the summer. While he couldn’t officially say what he was working on, he gave us a little taste off the record. We couldn’t wait until his idea came to fruition and we could take the wraps off. Well the time is now.

Thanedar moved to Indianapolis after meeting Scott Case at the legendary Mark Cuban Shark Tank Season 3 Premiere Party. Thanedar was working on a concept and in a 1:1 session Case, the two startup geniuses hashed out what’s become LabDoor today, an extremely easy to use “consumer reports for medicine and supplements”.

Thanedar, like his father, is a lifelong scientist and entrepreneur. Thanedar’s latest endeavor, LabDoor, is scientific at the core, but a consumer tool that will become invaluable over time.

In a nutshell what LabDoor does, is allows any consumer with their smartphone app, the ability to scan the barcode of pharmaceutical or supplement product A and compare it with pharmaceutical or supplement product B. How much different is that Albuteral inhaler than Ventolin or Proventil. What about Lipitor and it’s generic counterpart? What about the Vitamin B capsules from Walmart vs the Vitamin B capsules from CVS?

All of those are great questions you’ve probably wondered once or twice. Or at least you have your own similar questions.

LabDoor provides the easiest means to make sure you’re taking the right stuff.

We got a chance to talk with Thanedar who actually hurt our feelings earlier this week when he told us he though he was dead to us since he got accepted into the World Famous (valley based) Rock Health Accelerator. Actually we couldn’t be more proud of this brilliant entrepreneur, who is passionate about helping other founders anytime, anywhere.

Check out the interview below.

Ohio Startup Huddlewoo Wants To Know What You’re Extraordinary At? Launches Today

A new startup based in Columbus Ohio and Phoenix Arizona, called Huddlewoo, is launching today. This video platform gives ordinary people like me and you access to people we admire. Huddlewoo also lets ordinary people show off the things that they are extraordinary at.

Through Huddlewoo’s unique platform you can schedule 1:1 video conversations with people that you may not get the opportunity to meet in person.

Huddlewoo users create a profile and highlight what they are extraordinary at. The user than sets up an availability calendar through a tool within the web app. Once those two things are in place the user can set a price for their time, they can then decide if they want to make a little extra income or donate the fees from the video sessions to charity.

Are you a Zen SEO master and want to share a few tips in private settings? How much do you think that information is worth? You can set the price and the times and wait for people to line up to have Huddlewoo sessions with you. Maybe you’re a great baker and want to share some kitchen tips for making the best cupcakes, you can do that too. Whatever you are extraordinary at and willing to share (even for money) can be added in your profile and easily discovered by other members of the Huddlewoo community.

This unique video, mentoring, online class hybrid, startup opens up in alpha today. We got a chance to talk with the Huddlewoo team as they prepared for their alpha launch.

Check out the interview below.

Meet Rhode Island 500 Startups Startup: Waigo Translate (Translate Abroad)

Here at nibletz we’ve been fortunate enough to be chosen as the first test site for Markerly, our good friend Sarah Ware’s DC based publisher tools startup, and member of the just announced, 5th class at 500 startups. Through this great relationship we’ve got an awesome tool on the site, in Markerly, and exclusive early access to some of their cohorts.

Earlier this morning as the embargo lifted on this years 500 startups class, we brought you an interview with Australian startup Kickfolio. We also brought you an interview with Boston startup Privy.

Now we turn our sites again to the north east part of the country and Rhode Island startup Waigo Translate.

Waigo Translate is one of those uniquely cool startups that Dave McClure, Paul Singh and the entire 500 startups organization prides themselves on.

Waigo Translate is an app that turns your iPhone camera into a translation device. Waigo Translate current works with Chinese, Japanese and Korean, with more languages on the way. Yes that means you could use your phone to translate the written lyrics to Gangnam Style.

We got a chance to talk with Waigo Translate’s Marketing Director, Rob Sanchez. Check out the interview below.

New Louisville Startup To Tackle App Discovery (AGAIN), Check Out Appszito

App discovery is a beast. I remember two years ago at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York there were three app discovery startups. A few months later at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (2011) there were another three app discovery startups. The problem that all these startups are tackling is how to discover apps across multiple app stores and markets and finding apps in a somewhat logical way.

Louisville Kentucky startup Appszito is working on a search product that will allow smartphone users to easily find applications for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.

Appszito uses a proprietary relational algorithm that matches smarpthone users with the best and most cost effective app solutions for whatever it is they’re looking for.

When you enter a specific type of app or need, like CAD for instance, into the Appszito engine it combs the iTunes app store, Windows Market Place and multiple Android app stores to find the most relevant search results. Appszito provides pricing information, platform and a brief description of the application that’s met the search criteria. In true search fashion it serves up the most relevant matches first, but the list of apps can be plentiful.

Users are directly linked to the download site for each particular app.

Appszito is hoping to solve the pain of searching multiple places with less than stellar results for the smartphone user. They are also looking to provide a resource for app developers to drive downloads based on relevancy.

We got a chance to talk to Appszito co-founder Rahul Ahir about his startup and the Louisville startup scene. Check out the interview below.

500 Startups Unveiled Today: Meet Australian Startup Kickfolio The Easiest Way To Test iOS Apps

The startups that were selected to convene in the top secret 500 startups lair in Mountain View California this fall were revealed today. Dave McClure, the founder of 500 Startups along with Paul Singh have assembled another cohort of ass kicking, startup crushers, including Australian startup Kickfolio.

The rare breed of talent chosen to undergo the top secret 500 startups program come from all facets of the tech world. There are publishing startups, web tools, integrated browser plugins, analytical startups and even developer resources. That’s the category that Kickfolio fits in.

McClure and his team pick startups for a variety of reasons, undoubtedly the fact that this team has a co-founder named Diesel, must play into the flavor of startup monsters McClure is currently working on. Couple that with the fact that these Aussie founders swear Kickfolio is the best way for developers to test iOS apps and you have a recipe for startup inhalation.

We got a chance to talk with that particular founder, yes the one who goes by Diesel. Check out our interview with Diesel Laws below.

Manage All Your Bookmarks, Logins & Passwords With LA Startup MySocialCloud

Over the years browsers have become much more intuitive. All of the commercially used browsers have a keychain feature which allows you to save your logins and passwords, and even pre-populates them for you when you visit websites frequently. The problem with this current password storage method is it’s a cinch for anyone who gets access to your computer to view all of your passwords. In fact, one of the only real negatives I have with Mac’s is that they keep a similarly unsecure key chain on your hard drive as well.

There are a few startups out there that are tackling this problem with various password vaults. Most of these options keep your passwords in one spot and you need to remember the password to your vault and then look up the password by service.

Los Angeles startup MyScocialCloud is looking to streamline this process for you by storing your logins in the cloud. They make your passwords easily accessible by a browser plugin or bookmarklet. The best part is that they also keep your bookmarks organized as well. You don’t have to go searching through a password vault to find the password. MySocialCloud gives you the simplicity of a browser side or hard drive based keychain, but in the cloud, and more secure.

We got a chance to talk with Stacey Ferreira, the founder of MySocialCloud about her startup. Check out the interview below:

Boston 500 Startups Startup: Privy To Make Online Advertising Easier And Transparent

By now every new business owner knows that they need to have some kind of internet presence. Many also know that they need to advertise online. After business owners decide they need to advertise online, where to go and what to do often becomes a headache.

Google’s AdWords product is typically one of the easiest points of entry into online advertising. If you live in a small or medium sized market AdWords can work perfectly for you. However, when you get into larger cities, signing up and using AdWords can be a shot in the dark.

AdWords algorithm based advertising can be confusing to someone with very little online experience. Naturally, the more money you put into a platform like AdWords the better your conversions will be. Or at least that’s what many advertisers think.

When a company with a new online presence sprinkles in social media and other possible revenue streams, the overall plan can become a disorganized mess. It doesn’t take long to lose track of where your ad dollars are going, and how different efforts are paying off.

Boston startup Privy is creating a much easier online advertising platform to use and understand. Privy’s founder Ben Jabbawy is hoping to add a layer of transparency to online advertising that hasn’t existed before. Jabbawy wants to make it easy for local businesses to buy online advertising and know exactly how many customers they get for every dollar they spend.

Sounds easy enough right?

Dave McClure liked the concept enough to bring Privy out to Mountain View California for the current session of 500 Startups. We got a chance to talk to Jabbawy about Privy, his hometown of Boston and what makes advertising work. Check out the interview below.

Create Your Content, Build Your Brand With Halifax Startup eOLIO

A new startup has sprung up in the town of Timberlea Nova Scotia, just outside Halifax. The startup, called eOLIO, is a content creation, sharing and brand management tool that helps connect people with great content to businesses. The idea came from founder Traci Johnstone after she went on the job hunt and realized there wasn’t a good product online that showed her perspective employers the breadth of her creativity.

Branding, social and web identity are of paramount importance in today’s job race. Everyone has great resume items that show themselves off in the best possible light. How do you translate that to what you can do from your inner depths? Where does your creativity fit into all of this.

Naturally, most employers across the world vet candidates online, through Google searches and through social media. With eOLIO they can also see your creativity. The platform also directs businesses and perspective employers to what you want them to see first.

“eOLIO is about personal branding and our digital reputations — because how we represent ourselves online matters.” Johnstone said to us in the interview below.

As Johnstone prepares to launch her startup at the end of November, she took a few minutes to speak to us. Check out the interview below.

Startup Super Group Initiative Launched: Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, Udacity, Steve Blank

What do you get when you put together Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, and Udacity, and then let Steve Blank run the whole thing? Startup Weekend Next, that’s what!

Startup Weekend announced the largest Startup initiative to date today. The startup “super group” (as our good friend Michael del Castillo calls it), consists of Startup America, Startup Weekend, TechStars, and Udacity. It’s all being led by Blank who wrote the book on startups “The Startup Owners Manual”.

The four organizations, and Blank are teaming up to help launch 10,000 startups. Startup Weekend Next will be a rolling four week program with hands on training, education and inspiration.

The backbone behind Startup Weekend Next will be The Lean Launchpad Class that Blank came up with, adapting the ideas and lessons from the Startup Owners Manual and applying them to real life companies and scenarios. The class is currently taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Caltech,Princeton, the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech.

Blank also recently put the class online at Udacity where over 50,000 people have already started taking the course.

Certainly with the Udacity online course tens of thousands more entrepreneurs are able to take the course without being enrolled in some of the top colleges in the United States. As Blank points out in his blog though, the online version

“… doesn’t require you to form a team, and there’s no immediate instructor feedback. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers. In sum, it lacks the rigorous and collaborative hands-on experience that entrepreneurs get in our university classes”

After pondering and then collaborating to find ways to make the Lean Launch Pad accessible to entrepreneurs in a classroom environment the Startup Weekend Next initiative was born.

Startup America will leverage their 30 startup regions, and their Startup America Regional Champions throughout the country to assist, promote and engage entrepreneurs in the classes. Techstars will leverage it’s world class mentor network to help coach the teams.

There is a small fee between $140 and $299 assessed to basically just cover the costs of hosting the classes.

Blank described on his blog how Startup Weekend Next will work:

You form a startup team (if you don’t have one, taking the 54-hour Startup Weekend class is a great a way to find one) and come into class with an initial idea
Your team arrives with an initial Business Model Canvas. (Your pre-class reading is to watch the Lean LaunchPad initial lectures on Udacity)
You present your hypotheses and what you learned in front of your peers and coaches
Your team gets live coaching and advice from Startup Weekend Next mentors.
You’ll take the suggestions from the meeting, get out of the building and talk to ten plus customers per week.
You’ll refine your business model by iterating or pivoting your product, your target customers, pricing, channels, partners, etc.
Repeat for four weeks– all while working with volunteer mentor partners from Startup Weekend, Startup America and TechStars – serial entrepreneurs and seasoned startup investors – to see whether your business idea was truly a vision or simply a hallucination.

Blank is calling this endeavor a “pre-accelerator”. The possibilities of where a startup can go after Startup Weekend Next are endless.

Linkage:

Steve Blank’s Blog

Startup Weekend Next website

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